


Down in the Dark

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Asphyxiation, Gen, Trapped, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 09:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21096863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Jack is trapped.





	Down in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alessandriana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandriana/gifts).

> Continuing on with the Whumptober ficlets, this is for a request for the asphyxiation prompt with Agent Carter.

At first Jack tried to tell himself it was just his imagination he couldn't breathe in here. Spun by Dottie's expert hand, the door had slammed shut with a very final-sounding clunk, trapping him in the airlock of this experimental submarine on dry land.

An hour later, as measured by the softly glowing dial of his expensive little phosphorescent watch, he was pretty sure it wasn't actually his imagination.

Damn it, there had to be a way out of here. Peggy might conceivably find him ... but probably not, he thought grimly, in the number of hours (or minutes) that he had left to him. She might be Peggy Carter, but she was only human. There were no goddamn clues. No way she could even know he was missing yet; all she knew, if she knew anything at all, was that he was checking things out in the Jersey shipyards.

"Damn it, Peggy," he muttered, as he scraped his fingernails over the crack in the door, with no effect at all. "You're supposed to figure these things out. You're supposed to be better at this than me. You're supposed to ..."

But it didn't matter; she wasn't here. He sank down against the closed door, heaving for breath against the pressure on his chest. He already felt lightheaded; there was a ringing in his ears, a sluggish inability to connect one thought to another.

"... supposed to find me."

He had a bad feeling that, while he might not be dead yet, his ability to figure out a way out of here was slipping away and there was nothing he could do about it.

"Nice knowing you, Peggy," he said aloud to the dark interior of the airlock. He was using up air by talking, but it seemed to help, in a way, so he kept on doing it. "You know, I think you'll be good at running a federal agency. You should've been the one running the New York SSR, but then, you already know that. I don't know why you didn't say something --"

But he did, really. He did. Because Peggy chose her fights, chose them carefully, and that wasn't a fight she felt she could win. Not against the might of the U.S. Senate, and one Jack Thompson.

Or more accurately, it was the kind of fight where she might go down fighting, but wouldn't gave gained enough to make it worthwhile.

He could have thrown in on her side. He knew that. Had known that, even at the time.

"I did it _for_ you," he said to the darkness in the airlock, aware that he was having an argument in which the other person wasn't even there; an argument that had always been with himself, anyway. "They'd never have accepted a woman in that position. I didn't have a _choice._ I ..."

... Had never had a choice, about any of it, as he'd have justified it to Vernon's ilk. But forcing himself to justify his choices to Peggy, if only the Peggy in his head, made him wonder how justifiable any of it had been.

"I thought it made the most sense at the time," he said, looking up into the darkness. "I guess that's a defense of a sort, isn't it?" But of course it wasn't about that, not really. "It was what I always wanted, so of course I was going to have that. They wouldn't have put you in charge ..." No, maybe it was just that he hadn't thrown his own personal clout into her corner. It _might_ have worked. There had been a female cabinet secretary of ... something, wasn't there, during the '30s? "It would have been you and not me. And I could make it be me. And it got me to ..."

Nothing, was what it got him. He'd ended up with Vernon lurking vulturelike over his shoulder, trapped in a world of shadow-games and compromises and betrayals. It had gotten him Peggy's gun in his face, and his fist in Daniel's stomach, and then, eventually, a world where he might have ended up working for Peggy and he was pretty much okay with that ...

"Cut out the middleman," he murmured, and laughed, tipping his head back against the door. That was what he was, the middleman, the guy who ended up making deals for other guys, and no one was going to notice if that guy went missing ...

Which was the basic thought running around in his head when the airlock opened and he fell backwards onto Peggy's legs.

"Jack!" she exclaimed, diving to catch him. "Jack ... bloody Nora ... are you all right, man? We apprehended Dottie attempting to board a tugboat -- why are you laughing?"

"Personal reasons," he managed to gasp out. She was still holding him by the shoulders; he was half into her lap. It was impossible that she could have found him in the amount of time he'd been missing. But ... well ... she had. And the reason was Peggy Carter.

"Just take some breaths," she urged. From his somewhat horizontal position, he saw her look up, and give the airlock a troubled look. "... Jack."

"Oh, I've been in worse places," he managed, in something vaguely approaching a light tone. Peggy frowned down at him as if she suspected him of brain damage, which in all honesty he wondered if he might have suffered, because all he could do for a minute was grin at her. "You know what's different this time?" he managed to say at last, between deep gulps of air.

"I can't imagine," she said, looking up at the airlock again, one hand hovering over his head so lightly that he was only vaguely aware of it by the fingers brushing his hair.

"I knew you'd come and get me."

"Oh," she said quietly, and for a moment she rested her hand on top of his head before she put him off gently to get up and take back control of the scene.


End file.
